The industrial revolution of the 19th century brought about mass production: a method of manufacturing standardized products that was faster and more efficient than making them by hand. “You can have any color you want, as long as it's black.” (Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company, circa 1908) was the level of customization available through that manufacturing process. The 21th century has seen a new revolution—the Customer Revolution—that has created a consumer thirst for customized products with the desired result being mass customization. The Customer's or user's desire for personalized user generated products, in this instance nail polish colors manufactured to their specification, is an important topic of current research.
There are approximately 150 million bottles of nail polish sold every year in the US. Those sales represent individual bottles that are filled in mass with the same color. These colors have been prior defined by a creative designer or company associate, with those colors integrated into groups or lines of product that are marketed in retail and professional locations. These pre-defined colors have been formulated and manufactured in large volume batches; manufactured in large mixing vats of single colors of nail polish, coatings or other paint. These large batches of single colors are then filled into individual pre-labeled bottles in factories using traditional volume manufacturing equipment, systems and techniques.
Other patents have described automated nail polish dispensers. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,064 issued to Julie R Bartholomew, describes about user interactive custom nail polish color and effects dispensing system and method of doing business, including for both point of sale and remote transactions. U.S. Pat. No. 2,393,371 issued to Harris Irene describes about Display device for use in determining the shade of fingernail polish. U.S. Pat. No. 6,516,245 issued to Robert S Dirksing et al. describes about a method for providing personalized cosmetics. None of the prior art described above point to a system, which can customize the color of the end product based on an image capture.
Hence there is a need for a system which allows a customer to choose a localized color using their device by way of image capture (cell phone, tablet or computer that has an image capture capability), approve that color on their device screen, order one or more bottles of nail polish by way process to transact business on the internet, and have that product custom manufactured to their specification and shipped to their location.